September 7, 2012

"You have to do yourself a favor when you’re out in the countryside and you see a chicken: Try to look a chicken in the eye with great intensity, and the intensity of stupidity that is looking back at you is just amazing. By the way, it’s very easy to hypnotize a chicken; they are very prone to hypnosis, and in one or two films I have actually shown that."

Says Werner Herzog. One of the films, Strozek, is the first Werner Herzog film I ever saw. It was a double feature with Aguirre, Wrath of God, which was (obviously) the second Werner Herzog film I saw. I raved about these films to my (then) husband and I saw the double feature again, with him, the next day. For many years I called Aguirre, Wrath of God my favorite movie, but I love Strozek too, and not only does it have a chicken in it; it takes place mostly in Wisconsin. Here's the chicken:

the intensity of stupidity that is looking back at you is just amazing

They don't square up their head to look at something, they cock their head to one side and look with one eye. So most of the time you can't tell what they're trying to look at...and I'd say their eye is no more vacant than other birds (even the smart ones), fish, or your standard bulldog...

Herzog may be a tiny bit woo prone as far as hypnosis goes, but he's sure right about chickens: They're freakin' stupid. Massively stupid. I think the real answer to why the chicken crossed the road was because he was freakin' stupid.

And as far as Aguirre, Wrath of God: Man, I think only Herzog could've made that movie. I don't know if anyone could've properly coached the brooding insanity necessary for Kinski to make that character what it was.

Aguirre the Wrath of God is some of the coolest filmmaking ever. What's so cool about that movie is how epic and insane it is. Apocalypse Now has the same vibe. Just crazy damn filmmakers in the jungle, making some art.

And My Best Fiend, about the collaboration between Herzog and Klaus Kinski. I'm not sure who's crazier, Kinski or Herzog. Kinski seems insane. Herzog seems totally in control, and you think he's normal, and then you realize he's crazier than Kinski.

All well and good, but here's a TED's video, discussing the Coolidge Effect, and its relationship to porn viewing.

We males are hard wired to always be running after another hen. The Coolidge Effect was named after this apocryphal exchange between President Coolidge and a chicken farmer:

The President and Mrs. Coolidge were being shown [separately] around an experimental government farm. When [Mrs. Coolidge] came to the chicken yard she noticed that a rooster was mating very frequently. She asked the attendant how often that happened and was told, “Dozens of times each day.” Mrs. Coolidge said, “Tell that to the President when he comes by.” Upon being told, President asked, “Same hen every time?” The reply was, “Oh, no, Mr. President, a different hen every time.” President: “Tell that to Mrs. Coolidge.”

Enormity is frequently used as a synonym for "enormousness," rather than "invidiousness." This is frequently considered an error; the words have different roots in French, and radically different accepted meanings, although both trace back to the same Latin source word.

Quoting Jay Nordlinger on Joe Biden:

He spoke of the “enormity” of Obama’s heart — a harsher judgment on this president than any I heard in Tampa.

A question I'd like to ask Herzog-- what is it about a chicken's brain that is so wicked?

And never forget Magic Mike - the chicken (a botched dinner chopping) who lived 2 years without a head. (Sept 1945-March 1947). Talk about stupid! (but it shows how little is required to actually run their nervous systems - it actually tried to preen itself after its unfortunate "accident")

The house belonged to a fat old black woman. Very old. We passed her house on the way to our tree house located on the edge of a played out pecan orchard on the inside of a levee, Red River on the other side. Her house was the only thing between the river and a convenience store at the highway. So a tiny wooden house between a river and a highway and on the edge of an orchard and a field. I think this would have been a sharecropper. I think this is what happened immediately after slaves were freed. The tiny house is a teen-tiny farm, a little chunk of land cut out of another's larger chunk isolated and surrounded, nearly gobbled up, a fragile vignette momentarily arrested in time.

She lived alone. Late afternoon, chickens were fucking noisily right in front of us between the path to the river and her house, Eddie Stotko and I knew what they were doing but we asked the old woman anyway because we thought it was funny. "What are those chickens doing?" we asked incredulously. "I don't know what days doing, but days sure is doing it!" And we all three laughed at the silliness. Well that broke the ice and thereafter on each pass by her house we became more and more curious and daring, eventually she invited us in and we walked through and saw for ourselves how she lived. The things I see in movies do not quite approach what Eddie and I saw in that house, how she got on. We asked her a lot of questions and she patiently answered them all.

Naturally we were curious about her other animals. Pigs, rabbits in a hutch, and of course the chickens and turkeys running all around. We were brats, and I'm fairly sure she was glad to have us gone. Had I know then, I'd have appreciated their free range aspect over their hypnotizability.

My sister and/or her kids occasionally raise chickens on their farm and have them custom butchered. Organic free range chickens = sell to the city yuppies at premium prices = cash bonanza. I told her to do pasture fed next time--high in Omega 3, low in Omega 6. What good is free range if they're cornfed and high in Omega 6? Pasture fed is super premium, and you don't even have to buy any feed. Super cash bonanza.

That old woman's little area could not properly be called pasture. It was too stomped down. All compacted dirt. It has a dry chicken poop smell to the whole place. The chickens lay eggs in the bushes at the edges and she goes around and finds them, but it's all very closed and hard dirt ground. Pasture is nearby but too lush a word for that dry little spot, but they're still free ranging in the pure sense, not fed corn, but rather scrounging all day for bugs, grubs whatever those are, creepy things, things that move, inert things, junk, compost, other chickens' eggs, seeds, cigarette butts, bits of styrofoam cups, etc., so a broad variety.

In comparison to the Siberian crane and the Golden Eagle, the chicken is not such an impressive bird. However, it is in no danger of going extinct. In fact, for all its stupidity its numbers have increased dramatically in recent years. The chicken has mastered one key evolutionary skill: it tastes good. If the dodo bird had mastered the art of being fried, they would still be with us.

A large rooster has the same pitiless look in its eyes that an eagle might have. If you turn your back on one, he may run up your legs and back stabbing his spurs into your hide. It's no stretch for me to imagine them being descended from dinosaurs.

[Pankepp] played dozens of records to chickens attached to equipment designed to record their shivers of pleasure. The chickens turned out to have the strongest positive response to the late-era Pink Floyd record "The Final Cut." This is important information since, from an evolutionary perspective, if spirituality really is biological, that biology should be found not just in human beings but lower orders as well.

I understand Werzog is a big Obama supporter, and well he should be... Before BHO came to international prominence Werner Herzog was a lead pipe cinch for the uncoveted "World's Most Over-Rated Person" award.

Trying to assess an animal's intelligence (particularly a bird's) by the "look" in it's eye is an example of human stupidity.

We are primates. Many primates play the starring game (if you ever get a chance to visit the Mgahinga Gorilla Reserve in Rawanda, you'll get a long lecture about how NOT to stare at a silverback, and why it's extraordinarily dangerous to do so) it is one of our many non-verbal means of social communication. And like most other primates we also have facial muscles which give us expressions which link with our emotional and mental states.

Birds don't have much in the way of facial expressions -- some will open the beak as a threat display but this is more often not the case, an open beak most often means the bird is excited, agitated or just overheated (many birds pant like dogs). Birds communicate their emotions and social status very effectively by means of body postures, vocalizations and, unique to Aves, the state of the feathers.

As a falconer I learned to observe and interpret avian communication. Among the hawks and falcons the lie of the feathers and posture is key to this understanding. A bird who stands one-legged on your fist with her feathers roused, and who looks around with curiosity is content and at peace with her relationship to her human partner. One who stands equally on both legs with the feathers sleeked down, and who either stares back at you or follows your every motion with her gaze is not content, not at peace, and likely to foot you if given the opportunity.

Saint Croix is right about My Best Fiend. There's also Burden of Dreams by Les Blank, a documentary on the making of Fitzcarraldo. From Burden of Dreams, here is Herzog's wonderfully dark views on nature and the jungle.

There's also that great moment in Grizzly Man (which I haven't found on youtube, but I'm sure it's there somewhere) when Herzog the narrator contrasts his view of nature and the bears with Treadwell's:

“What haunts me is that, in all the faces of all the bears that Treadwell ever filmed, I discover no kinship, no understanding, no mercy. I see only the overwhelming indifference of nature. To me, there is no such thing as a secret world of the bears. And this blank stare speaks only of a half-bored interest in food.”